I am *really* not a computer guy, and this question has kinda been on my mind since I found out about doxxing/IP grabbers ages ago. I didn’t really care too much, since I am not a fan of putting people in danger over twitter like a dickhead, but can someone tell me generally why it’s a serious issue if someone leaks your IP?
Since this sounds as if I’m trying to doxx someone: I’m posting after searching my own IP & I found that most websites pinpointed my address to a different country entirely?? (Still a country next to mines, but definitely more than far away enough for me to care if mines were leaked). Famous people who get doxxed online always move away for safety, so I’m really confused why that is when the website I used to check my own IP address on a bunch of places online at once usually all ended up being a whole country off.
Even though I shouldn’t need to state this outright; **don’t give a step-by-step guide on how to doxx people**. I don’t want to know that. I just want to know why IP grabbing is such a big deal and how doxxing is possible vaguely in a way that forces people to move cities.
In: Technology
Basically, it isn’t scary, just sounds it to non-techy people.
it can get you a *very* rough approximate location (e.g. looked mine up once, it didn’t get the right city, didn’t even get the next closest city, it got the *next* closest city).
what else you can do with it depends on your ISP, they could try to ddos your IP which will bring your internet down for awhile but your isp should have protections against that.
They could also try to probe it and find any vulnerabilities assuming your not behind an ISP CGNAT (to get taken out of the nat and get your own personal ip not shared with anybody else you need to contact your isp and they usually want you to pay extra) but if you haven’t done anything to make your network vulnerable and keep your router updated then you’ll be fine, bots are going through every public ip looking for vulnerabilities anyway so it’s something that will periodically happen to your network anyway.
Your IP address gives away your ISP, and your ISP knows your street address, but won’t communicate it unless it’s requested by some legitimate authority.
People who host services you use are technically able to log your activities, associated with your IP address
someone getting access to these data from various sources could build a profile linked to your IP.
Ip address is basically your internet phone number.
Depending on apps on your phone and ads/cookies company data etc your ip address could possibly link to you directly.
For example amazon could easily know your ip and name at a specific time if you buy stuff from Amazon.
If a company like that sells your data it may be very easy to find out who the ip address likely belongs to.
if they get your ip address they can ddos your router and you lose internet access in the mean time.
if they get your ip and personal details they can use that information to recover your runescape accounts.
if they work for the nsa they can backdoor your computers and take control of everything.
If they can leak your IP address then it means they might also have the capability to leak even more important things like your actual name, DoB, passport number, even bank details etc…
Our blood is red always due to the iron in the hemoglobin essentially rusting. Crustaceans have copper at the center of the cell that carries oxygen to their bodies and their blood is blue due to the copper turning blue when oxygenated (like the Statue of Liberty)
Anyone who isn’t trying to track you, specifically, won’t learn anything useful, and anyone who is trying to track you, specifically, probably doesn’t need your IP. At worst, you saved them a bit of time.
An IP address just gives an extremely approximate location. It’s extremely rare for a hacker to be able to get a single street address from an IP. There’s a few reasons for this, but the biggest reason is that ISP’s reassign IP addresses often enough that an IP that corresponds to my place one day, might correspond to my neighbor down the street the next, and might not exist the day after that. So, when they see your connection having some IP, all they know is that you’re in a range of houses capable of having that IP assigned. And this by itself, isn’t enough information to do much to you.
To actually track you down, they need to connect that IP with more specific details, and most of the ways to do that, work whether they have your IP or not. If you show pictures of your house, for instance, they could read the house number and get it that way, but then they can just look up your house from the picture, no IP necessary. Similarly, if you accidentally leak your address, or someone phishes you into telling them your address, or hacks a computer holding your address, they have your address – again, no IP necessary. And if someone hacks your phone, they can see its GPS reading, and they have your address, no IP necessary.
If you know what you’re doing, and have the time and resources necessary, it’s relatively straightforward (albeit slow) to hack someone. But the people who know what they’re doing, generally focus on targets of actual value. Political enemies, people rich enough to extort, people against whom they hold serious grudges, that kinda thing. Hackers who will pick on a single random individual just for the lolz, are incredibly rare. And if you are sufficiently important to get that kind of attention, you’re probably worth putting in enough effort that “wait for your IP to leak” isn’t an essential part of their plan.
You IP address CAN NOT BE LEAKED.
Why? Because it’s already public information. Everyone on the internet knows your IP address. It’s not a secret, it hold no special power.
anyone that says different is selling something.
Your IP won’t actually give someone useful information about you. It will give the nearest data center but not your address.
So it might tell them your city at most.
Doxxing works by taking little bits of information and finding more. Which sounds obvious but it’s like this.
Let’s say you use the same username across multiple services. I search that name, I find a service where your email is tied to your username. I use that email and find your Facebook or Twitter account. That has your name. Now I have your name and your city (from your IP) and I put that into white pages and get your address.
If someone asks for your IP address, tell them it’s 127.0.0.1. Whatever they do, they will do to their own computer. That’s a reserved IP and always points to the computer using it.
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